Glaucus; Or, The Wonders of the Shore

But all the sea-weeds, in common with other vegetables, perform this function continually, and thus maintain the water in which they grow in a state fit to support animal life. This fact— first advanced by Priestley and Ingenhousz, and though doubted by the great Ellis, satisfactorily ascertained by Professor Daubeny, Mr. Ward, Dr. Johnston, and Mr. Warrington— gives an answer to the question, which I hope has ere now arisen in the minds of some of my readers,— How is it possible to see these wonders at home? Beautiful and instructive as they may be, can they be meant for any but dwellers by the sea-side? Nay more, even to them, must not the glories of the water-world be always more momentary than those of the rainbow, a mere Fata Morgana which breaks up and vanishes before the eyes? If there were but some method of making a miniature sea-world for a few days; much more of keeping one with us when far inland.— This desideratum has at last been filled up; and science has shown, as usual, that by simply obeying Nature, we may conquer her, even so far as to have our miniature sea, of artificial salt-water, filled with living plants and sea-weeds, maintaining each other in perfect health, and each following, as far as is possible in a confined space, its natural habits. To Dr. Johnston is due, as far as is known, the honour of the first accomplishment of this as of a hundred other zoological triumphs. As early as 1842, he proved to himself the vegetable nature of the common pink Coralline, which fringes every rock-pool, by keeping it for eight weeks in unchanged salt-water, without any putrefaction ensuing. The ground, of course, on which the proof rested in this case was, that if the coralline were, as had often been thought, a zoophyte, the water would become corrupt, and poisonous to the life of the small animals in the same jar; and that its remaining fresh argued that the coralline had re-oxygenated it from time to time, and was therefore a vegetable.